


a flower does not choose its color

by lionheartedgirl



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Dawn-Centric, Ensemble - Freeform, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Mentions of canon deaths, Spoilers for S5, nothing shown or graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-22 03:19:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3712882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionheartedgirl/pseuds/lionheartedgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Dawn’s blood was made to destroy the world. </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Buffy’s blood was made to save it. </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>She has Summer’s blood, you see, but it’s a darker shade when you look close.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	a flower does not choose its color

**Author's Note:**

> for the prompt: _I'm a kitchen sink, you don't know what that means, because a kitchen sink to you, is not a kitchen sink to me, ok friend?_

“Dawn.”

She practices saying her name into the mirror.

“Dawn.”

Says it again and again trying to make sense of things that don’t make sense at all. She says it over and over trying to undercover something that she knows must be there.

“Dawn.”

She asks her mother why she had chosen that name. She says she had just thought it was pretty, as she combs her fingers through her hair. (The truth is that she hadn’t chosen her name at all.)

_“Dawn.”_

She looks up the definition for it.

_**1) the first appearance of light in the sky before sunrise.** _

_synonyms: daybreak, sunrise, first light_

_**2) beginning (of a day)** _

_synonyms: begin, break, arrive, emerge_

_**3) become evident to the mind; be perceived or understood.** _

_synonyms: occur to, come to, strike, enter someone's mind, enter someone's consciousness, suggest itself_

“Dawn.” She says into the mirror.

Sometimes she wonders if the word, the name, was created just for her.

(History rewrote itself for her, why not this too?)

 

 

\--

 

 

She has Summer’s blood.

She is made of it. She has her mother’s eyes and her father’s hair and she has Buffy’s stubbornness, though neither of them will admit to it.

She has Summer’s blood.

Dawn was made out of it. Molded in to flesh and blood, pieces that fit together to form a girl with memories of a life that did not exist until she did, with feeling that she will never know if they’re own, with a body that is hers and not hers at the same time.

They made her into something new. They made her into a Summers’ woman.

But her blood is different, it’s the part that people never like to talk about. Her blood is darker as it spills from her body, a different shade of red.

And when her mother’s blood spills, or even her sister’s, it doesn’t do anything at all.

Dawn’s blood was made to destroy the world.

Buffy’s blood was made to save it.

She has Summer’s blood, you see, but it’s a darker shade when you look close.

 

 

\--

 

 

Spike tells her, promises her even, that she is not evil. He’s seen real evil you see, and she’s not it.

But just because she’s not evil does not make her good.

She was built to protect the world.

But she had the power to destroy it.

(Why did everyone keep forgetting that?)

Buffy tells her she is real. Holds their hands together smeared with blood and says they are the same. Promises it.

But that does not make it true.

Buffy is the hero of the story.

Dawn is the dragon, green and glittery and she will burn the world with light and fire until there is no one left to save.

(No one likes to think about that part.)

Her mother holds her close and she promises her that no matter what she’ll always be her baby girl and that she belongs to her. No one can take that away, not Glory, not the monks, not anybody. She’s her baby, her Dawn.

Her mother (who isn’t her mother at all) dies.

(Always didn’t last that long did it?)

 

\--

 

 

_sunrise, break, come to, begin, suggest itself, emerge, first light, arrive_

Sometimes she wonders if the word, the name, was created just for her.

(History rewrote itself for her, why not this too?)

 

\--

 

Dawn dreams of a green light.

Of floating away into nothingness.

She dreams of blood spilling down to her feet, it echoes as it hits the metal and she hears every drop fall.

She dreams of green light, of fire and blood.

Dawn dreams of a freedom she has never known.

 

\--

 

She stares into the mirror as she says her name and its familiar, but sometimes she thinks when she moves to quickly she catches a hint of green in her eyes.

It’s not supposed to be there.

The monks, they molded her into something new, something with feelings and a capacity for love and a hunger for everything around her, a want for it. She longs and she steals things that don’t belong to her (a piece of jewelry here, a tube of lipstick there, a candy bar, a mother, a sister). She longs for power that belongs to others, she longs for that feeling of freedom, of safety in the back of her mind.

Dawn doesn’t think they expected that.

But in the end, she is still made of green energy, flowing through her, making her who she is. Bigger and more than she can contain inside, but with nothing to allow her to pour it out.

She thinks she might be special.

She thinks she might be powerful even, if she could just find a way—if she could just find the lock she is looking for and not the one everyone else wants.

Dawn thinks there’s something inside her, bright and made of fire that will surpass everyone around her.

If she could just find the right key.

(Ironic right?)

 

\--

 

 

_arrive, begin, first light, break, emerge_

Sometimes she wonders if the word, the name, was created just for her.

(History rewrote itself for her, why not this too?)

 

\--

 

Dawn has scars across her skin.

She made some of them herself, thinks sometimes she’ll do it again but she’ll never say that out loud.

She has scars across her skin, from a monster of a man who worshipped a God not worth worshipping, who reached too high and died for it.

(She reached for Dawn, literally and figuratively, and all it got her was death.

She was not the first and Dawn is sure she will not be the last.)

No one else has seen the scars, she keeps them to herself, but stares at them in the mirror, the same way she used to say her name.

Tries to decipher what they mean, if they mean anything at all, a map across her skin that leads her nowhere. A list of things taken from her. A map to a place that no longer exists. The memory of a sister who’s ghost walks around her, smiling and with eyes that don’t close, as Dawn wraps her arms around her.

Some days she thinks, wonders, what happens now.

What happens if her blood spills to the ground, if she forces the knife in too hard and—

Dawn cuts off her thoughts.

She has too.

Buffy told her to live.

 

\--

 

_light, break, begin_

Sometimes she wonders if the word, the name, was created just for her.

(History rewrote itself for her, why not this too?)

 


End file.
